The Arena
Sometimes it can be very hard to deal with the loss of a near family member. It is a hard situation to overcome and it is even harder to deal with the fact that the person is not alive anymore. Everything associated with the loss of a beloved one, will be remembered and you will fought bravely to accept the new situation.
The only thing left behind, is the many memories. Sometimes they sadden us and at othertimes they enlight our whole day. This is the situation that the protagonist in the short story, “The Arena” by Martin Golan from 2008, goes through.
The story is circled around the unnamed protagonist. He is the narrator of the story and as a reader we follow him drive his son to the bus so he can meet his lacrosse team at the “The Arena”. The narrator is explicit, because the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist is being provided for the reader. This does not only make the story more subjective but also the events are seen through the eyes of the narrator.
Using this type of a narrator can make the events that occurs in the short story very unreliable, because it is only shown from one specific viewpoint.
The themes that occurs in this short story is the strong bond between a parent and their child. What also seems to be involved is the hope of escaping the pastlife and memories. Maybe it is the mental state of the mind that is on focus. The flashbacks and thougts about the past life could also mean that he misses his old life. So missing
When he fell in love I believe that the father was conflicted with chasing his dreams or staying and living the dream his beloved had envisioned. At the time he might have felt like he was making the decision that he wanted but as the years went by he regretted his choice but chose to continue living his life never fully being who he really wanted to be.
Conflict was used effectively in the short story to reveal the theme of the story. The boy has an internal conflict about which parent to stay with, and because his father left, he seemed to have favored him. He wanted him back so badly that every night, he watches him on the six o’clock news while wearing his old jackets. He was blinded by his father’s sudden departure that he forgot about what is really important. Additionally, another development in the short story’s conflict has been used effectively to reveal the theme. When the boy went to Macdonald’s to see his father’s true colors, he thought: “I finished my drink quickly, thankful that he had to be back in the studio for the news.” By the time he saw his dad for the first time in a while, he knew he was not the man he thought he was. At that moment, he also realized that he lost sight of what he had all this time: His mother’s unconditional love. If it wasn’t for the characterization of
The point of view of a narrator can make or break a story, as the narrator is extremely important to the reader's understanding of a story. Different points of view and different narrators can oftentimes affect the point the story is attempting to portray and it even change what the reader believes the story is about. If someone were to go through a story written in a first-person narrative story and change all the pronouns to a third-person point of view, or even a first person plural point of view, it can distort the way the reader understands and comprehends the story.
The narrator through out most of the short story comes of as a pretty shallow character. Besides his stereotyping tendencies he comes of as callous and un-imaginative. He shows his lack of
Even though death is inevitable, it is quite clear that people can devise methods under which they can cope with the loss of their loved ones; for instance, their immediate relatives if not friends. Drawing practical guidelines from this book, one can constructively come up with communication strategies that may have encouragement to those who have lost their loved ones. This initiative encourages
Imagine being told one day a loved one has been savagely murdered. I could not imagine being told something like that, but I have had to go through the deaths of two grandmothers at the hands of cancer. I can personally say watching someone you love day in and day out suffer is one of the hardest things a person can go through. My dad’s mom passed away before I was even born, so I am left with knowing my grandmother loved me so much but I never got to meet her. My mom’s mother passed away when I was eight years old and she was always my babysitter and loved me more than anything, but they were both taken away from me due to breast cancer.
The experience of a person losing a loved one is very difficult to accept and then cope with. “He gets all teary telling about the good times they had together, how her brother made the war seem almost fun.” pg. 67-68 (Tim O’Brien). Losing someone close to you is hard to accept because once their gone things don’t feel the same anymore and you just can’t stop thinking about them and the memories you guys shared together. It’s also very hard to cope with because you’re so used to having that person around and when their no longer there you feel so empty and that feeling is so horrible. Having to deal with the fact that someone who was so special to you is no longer there isn’t easy to accept.
During our lives we need to cherish the time we have with friends and family that are close to us because nobody is immortal. In the books “Freak the Mighty” and “Bridge to Terabithia” a tragedy struck and the main character still alive found ways to remember their friends. In “Freak the Mighty” a boy named Max wrote a book about the great times he had with his friend who died from Morquio. The same situation happened in a book “Bridge to Terabithia” except the boy Jess continued running their secret fort. So when you do lose someone you should try to find a unique and special way to cherish the memories you share.
Everyone deals with the loss of a loved one in their own way. While some may shut themselves away for days on end, others may throw themselves into activities that keep them busy enough to forget their pain. After serving Milford, Bridgeport and Stratford for over 100 years, there are four tips that the funeral planning professionals at Adzima Funeral Home recommend for starting the healing process:
For some bereavement is an unpredictable and traumatic experience, the loss of a loved one may evoke in the individual you support, behaviours and emotions you have not seen
The death of an individual who was once very close to you can be hard to cope with. Dealing with death isn’t easy for everyone as it can result in one’s mental, emotional or even financial downfall.
The passing of a loved one is a universal experience and every person will experience loss or heartache, at some point in their life. Some people obviously appear upset, some do not, grief is individual, dependent on; age, gender, development stage, personality, their normal stress reactions, the support available, their relationships or attachments, other death experiences, how others react to their own grief around them (Thompson & Hendry, 2012).
Though some may say, myself included, that the death of a family member is one of the hardest, toughest, traumatic things to deal with, it also comes with a good side. That good side is that it brings people together to not only mourn over a loss, but to celebrate the life of someone great. One can either sink from a situation like this, or one can rise. I feel like my family and I chose to rise from this. We were all changed in so many ways. My grandma, Veronica, was especially changed the most. She and my granddad did absolutely everything together. They
Have you ever had someone that was close to you die? I have had pets that I was close to die, but not someone I saw on weekly bases, until my great grandfather died. Death is something everyone experiences some time in their lifetime and people deal with it in many different ways. In the August of 2016, I was forced to learn how I was going to learn to deal with it.
Now I can say that I had never understood others suffering from a bad loss of a dear person. I would hate to hear that anybody died. When this happened to me, when my dear mother died, I started to understand all those people who lost someone they loved. There are perhaps no proper words to describe this pain, This intolerable pain which tears you apart, which is like a stone on your heart, and which make tears run down your face with each moment spent with the dear person who passed away. Time is unlikely to pass so fast this hurt, no matter what others claim.